I was dumbstruck. What had Henley been thinking of? His uncle a forger. Well, that was between him, his conscience and his customers. I didn’t care one way or the other. But I did care about Louise Paxton. And it was being suggested according to the reviewer-on what evidence he didn’t bother to mention-that there was more to her murder than met the eye. More, by implication, than could be laid at Shaun Naylor’s door.
I telephoned Sarah that evening. Before I could explain why I’d called, she guessed.
“You’ve read Fakes and Ale?”
“No. Just a review.”
“Then you might be making more of it than you should. Henley Bantock sent me an advance copy. Crowed about his theory in a covering letter. Said I’d be bound to find it persuasive. Well, I don’t. He hasn’t produced a shred of evidence to support it.”
“But what is his theory?”
“That Oscar was murdered because several dealers he’d sold fakes to were afraid he meant to go public with the story of how he’d duped them. And that Mummy had the bad luck to be there when it happened. But he can’t back it up. The forgery business seems to be true. But obviously that wasn’t sensational enough for the publisher. So, Henley’s gilded the lily with this wild idea that just happens to tally with Naylor’s defence.”
“But surely, if there’s no evidence-”
“It’ll come to nothing. Exactly. That’s why I didn’t bother to tell you about it. But look, I have to go out and…” She seemed to be whispering to somebody in the background. “Why don’t I send you the book, Robin? It’ll be quicker than you ordering a copy. Then you’ll see what I mean.”
It arrived two days later. The cover illustration was one of Oscar Bantock’s own paintings, a blurred but eye-catching self-portrait depicting the artist standing in a luridly decorated bar drinking from a tankard shaped in the likeness of a death’s head. There was a queasily prophetic quality to it that made me think Sarah might have been glad to get it off her hands.
According to the blurb on the dust jacket, Henley Bantock was a former local government officer. Presumably, he and Muriel had already earnt enough from Uncle Oscar’s art to quit the bureaucratic life. Now they were aiming to cash in on his scandalous secrets while enjoying the luxury of condemning them. With Barnaby Maitland to lend the whole thing some scholarly gloss. Maitland had books on two other twentieth-century forgers-the notorious “Sexton Blaker” Tom Keating and the Vermeer specialist, Hans van Meegeren-to his credit. He must have seemed an obvious choice as co-author. Just as the journals Henley had discovered at Whistler’s Cot must have been too succulent an opportunity for Maitland to resist.
I read the book in one long sitting, enduring Henley’s self-serving hatchet job on his uncle’s character for the sake of Maitland’s convincingly detailed account of how and why he’d taken to forgery. And even that was only a necessary preamble to what really concerned me. We came to it slowly, via Maitland’s meticulous verification of the output of forgeries recorded in the journals. Oscar had wanted the truth to come out after his death, of course. That was the point of them. To show what fools the experts were to denigrate his work. To prove they couldn’t tell good from bad, true from false, real from fake. And he’d proved his point. Perhaps too well. The Rouaults and Soutines were his fatal mistake, in Maitland’s opinion. They fetched high prices despite doubts about their authenticity. Such high prices that the truth about them threatened the reputations and livelihoods of influential dealers and powerful middle-men. The authors reckoned Oscar let it be known he meant to publish the facts. It would have been his glorious V-sign to the self-appointed arbiters of taste who’d done him down. It would have fulfilled his true motive for turning out fakes, which was never really money in their opinion so much as distorted pride.
Sarah was right. They hadn’t uncovered any evidence to support their theory. It was a shallow invention designed to boost sales. But to the ill-informed it might sound plausible. A contract killing that claimed Louise Paxton as an extra victim because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Where did that leave Naylor? The authors didn’t know. But Maitland doubted he was the sort to be employed as a hit-man. So, in the end, their implication was clear. But unstated. That was the worst of it. They never came out and said what many readers would infer. That Naylor was innocent.
I felt so angry after finishing the book that I wrote to Henley Bantock care of his publisher, accusing him of a gratuitous attack on a fine woman’s memory. It was a stupid thing to do, since it merely elicited a sarcastic reply that deliberately missed the point I’d made. “You were not above deceiving me about your connection with Lady Paxton,” Bantock wrote, “so your high moral tone is scarcely justified. Our conclusions about the Kington killings represent a reasonable extrapolation of the known facts. I am sorry if they offend you, but I wonder if that is not really because you resent us seeing matters in a clearer light than you.” I didn’t pursue the correspondence. Nor did I comply with his closing request. “Please pass on my best wishes to your sister.”
According to Sarah, the only sensible course of action was to ignore the book. “Treat it with the contempt it deserves, Robin,” she said in a telephone conversation shortly after I’d finished it. “Chuck it on the fire if you like. I don’t want it back.”
I didn’t destroy it, of course. I slid it into a bookcase out of sight, spine turned to the wall, and did my best to forget all about it. Oscar Bantock’s career as a forger would no doubt run and run as a story in the art world. But I didn’t move in the art world. As for its supposed relevance to Naylor’s conviction as a rapist and double murderer, that was surely a kite that wouldn’t fly. With or without Fakes and Ale, Shaun Naylor was staying where he belonged: in prison. And the truth was staying where it belonged. The Kington killings weren’t going to come back to haunt us. Not so long after the event. Not in the face of so much certainty. They couldn’t. Could they?
I had lunch with Bella and Sir Keith over Easter. They took the same line as Sarah. Dignified silence was the only way to respond to Henley Bantock’s money-grubbing. “I’m glad Louise never knew old Oscar was into forgery,” said Sir Keith. “She thought he was a neglected genius-and an idealist to boot. The real irony is that this will actually increase the value of genuine Bantocks. Like the ones Louise bought for next to nothing. And Sophie Marsden. She should be pleased. But Henley’s the big winner, isn’t he? Royalties from his nasty little book. And God knows what per cent whacked onto his stockpile of Bantock originals. With all that to look forward to, you’d think he could have had the decency to leave the murders out of it. But people never are moderately greedy, are they? They always want more.”
I enquired tentatively about Rowena’s reaction to the book. But as far as Sir Keith knew, she was unaware of its existence. “Too busy trying to combine being a student and a housewife to comb through reviews. Paul hasn’t drawn it to her attention and, frankly, I think he’s wise not to. We don’t want any repetition of those problems she had before the trial, do we? In fact, I’d be grateful if you took care not to mention it next time you meet her. With any luck, it’ll pass her by completely. Leave her free to concentrate on making me a grandfather as soon as possible.”
I promised to say nothing, even though I wasn’t sure keeping Rowena in the dark was either feasible or sensible. Too many secrets were piling up for my liking. Presumably, Sir Keith still didn’t know about her suicide attempt. Now she wasn’t to know about Henley Bantock’s alternative explanation for her mother’s death. If and when she found out, the efforts to shield her from it might give the theory some of the credibility it didn’t deserve. “It’ll end in tears,” my mother would have said. And I’d have been bound to agree with her. Tears. Or something much worse.